Legit Reviews have managed to get a hands-on with Gigabyte’s G1.Assassin 3 at the Intel Developer Forum 2013 event. This new X79 chipset LGA 2011 socket motherboard is revamped for Ivy Bridge-E and is built on the ATX form factor. The motherboard uses a 9 phase CPU VRM with PowIRstage driver-MOSFETs by International Rectifier. The CPU socket is wired to 8 DIMM slots supporting two pairs of quad channel RAM – up to 64GB is supported. In terms of PCI Express connectivity their are four PCIe 3.0 x16 lanes and a pair of PCIe 2.0 x1 lanes provided by the X79 PCH.
On the storage side the motherboard provides four SATA III ports and four SATA II ports. Network connectivity is provided by a pair of Gigabit ethernet ports (one Intel driven) and an add-in WLAN 802.11AC WiFi card which also combines Bluetooth 4.0. Audio is provided by a Creative Sound Core3D controller which has a high SNR DAC and quality OP-AMP circuity with user replacement amps (Gigabyte’s AMP-UP feature). In terms of USB ports there are six USB 3.0 ports provided and a bunch of USB 2.0 ports. Heatsink designs weren’t finalised so the board looks a bit bare but the final design should be made public when the motherboard launches in the near future.
Image courtesy of Legit Reviews
The colours on the boards are a bit at odds with each other. I hope the retail boards come with a better colour co-ordinated scheme.